Reflective Log: Book; Sweet Dreams: Contemporary art and complicity by Johanna Drucker

Key points & Reflections:

• Oscar Wilde - "art for arts sake" approach... "notion of autonomy... a sophisticated acknowledgment of complicity" (Drucker, 2006, xiv)
• "Artists working today are also keenly influenced by the mass media and material culture as much as by the rich traditions of fine art." (Drucker, 2006, xiv) - a bit about the conscious influences of the contemporary artist. 
• "The term "complicit" is deliberately provocative, since it implies a knowing compromise between motives of opportunism and circumstantial conditions - whether on the plane of production, or reference, or within institutional and social situations." (Drucker, 2006, xvi)

Chapter 2: Current conditions

• The chapter begins with a comparison between art in todays climate (for example 'store bought items trash and mass produced images'), is just an extreme version of the emperors new clothes, as if art is some massive illusion, or all in the concept. 
• "But the relationship of the production values of works to their symbolic value continues to be a key factor in the function of fine art as a distinct category of cultural activity."(Drucker, 2006, 12). 
• Comments on production and value of art. 

• Chapter 4 focuses on eclectic materialism, mass media culture... 

• "Rendering artistic expression in consumable material always opens it to co-optation, just as any sign of enthusiasm for the mainstream seems liable to the charge of commercial opportunism. Modern art so often and deeply marked its opposition to consumer culture except as a source for "material" (in an almost literal sense) that many current approaches seem to raise the fundamental question of how fine art distinguishes itself from other forms of cultural expression." (Drucker, 2006, 89-90). 
• This quote is basically saying fine art is commercial and has commercial opportunity because it is mainstream, yet modern art opposes its connection with material value other than that of the materials needed to create the work. I think contemporary art is therefore a contrasting development from modern art as artists have learnt to exploit their material value for consumption purposes. And perhaps that is how fine art now distinguishes itself. 
• Glossary research: co-optation: 'to elect into a body by the votes of the existing members', or, 'to assimilate, take, or win over into a larger or established group.' - Dictionary.com
• "Fine art is not advertising. Individual works of art and artistic vision, no matter how complicit, or corrupt, are distinguished by their fundamental undirectedness, by the unpurposed nature of the undertaking." This quote I could disagree with because I could argue some art has a very purposed nature of the undertaking (process). 

Chapter 4 :  Subsection: Slacker aesthetics page 93 -103 

• Talks about artist Jason Rhoades, who had a show at the David Zwirner Gallery.
• His work features badly made art, "Rhoade's piece struck me iniitally as another of those how-bad-can-it-be-and-therefore-get-a-lot-of-attention works"(Drucker, 2006, 95)
• "This "unconstructedness" and the low production values had a timely value in the early 1990s, particularly, with respect to then-current cultural reassessments of the status of work, labour and production." (Ducker, 2006, 95). Comments on overconsumption. 

Books' Conclusion

• Argument: "The argument I have tried to make arises from these many observations and is simply that the critical frameworks inherited from the avant-garde and passed through the academic discourses of current fine art history are constrained by the expectation of negativity."(Drucker, 2006, 247)
• "Fine art, artists, and critics exist in a condition of complicity with the institutions and values of contemporary culture" (Drucker, 2006, 247)
• "We respond to work because of its aesthetic effect."(Drucker, 2006, 252)

Reflections & Further research:

• This book talks about a number of topics very relative to my subject and interests. 
• Art and complicity to the market is a high theme. 
• In our culture, consumerism is an escape from life. Our culture surrounds itself with consumerism and material goods. 
• Jason Rhoades could be a good contrast artist to those working with material value, and comments on labour and production.